Lives in the Yiddish
TheatreSHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN
THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"1931-1969

Abe Kogut

Born on 19 December 1878 in
Tost, near Tarnopol, Galicia. Father -- a tailor. He
learned in a cheder. In 1884 he arrived with his parents
in America, learned in a public school, at age thirteen
began to work with suspenders, and a little later
organized the drama clubs "Young Star Dramatic" and
"Pleasure Club," where the members, most of the time
were the workers in the suspenders shop, used to by
himself put together stages in halls in which they used
to perform.

S. Minesman writes:

"At age fourteen he
organized in New York a dramatic circle under the name
'David Kessler Dramatic Club'. He then was an errand boy
and earned three dollars a week. He had to give his
entire earnings to his parents. For he had lost fifty
cents and that sum he had invested in the cost of the
'dramatic club' which had rented a hall, bought their
own stage and took it to their production. When they
filled/completed a curtain, a member of the club, a
mattress maker, oygeneyt a curtain that he had to
carry back at night to a shop, entering so that one may
not recognize that he did gegnbet there."

Later the club took a place
on Fifth Street with a stage and produced (with
Augenblick, Hokhshteyn, Gabel, Jennie Atlas, Kogut)
Gabel's "Der zee-kenig".

When in New York the
"Industrial Union" was founded, K. founded the
"Industrial Workers Actors Union", of which he became
the president and manager (where Berta Gerstin Rose
Finkental, Nathan Goldberg, Isidore Meltzer, Annie
Meltzer, Morris Tuchband, and many others, who had later
left the stage, were members in this union, which had
competed with Local 5, and had existed for three years.

At the same time, K. was the
star comic and manager for twelve dollars a week, and he
acted in Yiddish vaudeville in the Golden Rule,
Victoria, Thalia and Clinton Music Hall.

K. gave on that performance,
and when moving [cinema] pictures houses arrived, he was
manager of that house and directed there in Yiddish
"acts". Then he was manager of Loew's movie company in a
movie house on Broadway. In 1913 K. chose to become
manager of the Actors' Union Local 5 and left that
office in 1920 in order to be able to devote himself to
the two summer theatres (Second Avenue and Peoples),
which he managed for two seasons. Later K. was dedicated
to managing legitimate Yiddish theatres in Detroit,
Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York (Prospect and
McKinley), managed a tour of Chaim Yablokoff ("Der
payatz" [The Clown]"), and for Jacob Ben-Ami's troupe.
In 1935 he was manager of a Yiddish theatre in
Philadelphia, and in 1938 with Yablokoff's "National
Theatre" in New York.